Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Netflix As An Engineering Company

A paragraph to ponder via the New York Times Magazine by Joe Nocera - - Screen Grab:

"Although news coverage now tends to focus on its shows, Netflix remains every bit as much an engineering company as it is a content company. There is reason that its shows rarely suffer from streaming glitches, even though, at peak times, they can sometimes account for 37 percent of internet traffic: in 2011 Netflix engineers set up their own content-delivery network, with servers in more than 1,000 locations. Its user interface is relentlessly tested and tweaked to make it more appealing to users. Netflix has the ability to track what people watch, at what time of day, whether they watch all the way through or stop after 10 minutes. Netflix uses "personalization" algorithms to put shows in front of its subscribers that are likely to appeal to them. Nathanson, the analyst, says: "They are a tech company. Their strength is that they have a really good product.""